Victor Willis obit

Victor Willis, Village People lead singer, dies at 74

Willis, who co-wrote hit single “Y.M.C.A.”, died of a “short but aggressive illness,” his band said. President Trump paid tribute to him, calling Willis “a great and happy guy.” 

He was not on the list.

Victor Willis, 74, the lead singer of the 1970’s disco-group Village People, has died, his team said Wednesday.

“We are profoundly sad to announce the death of VICTOR WILLIS, lead singer of Village People,” according to a statement posted on the band’s official Facebook Page.

“Victor passed on Tuesday June 30, 2026 of a short but aggressive illness,” it added. “Privacy is requested.”

His wife, Karen Huff Willis, later issued a similar statement on Facebook.

Texas-born Willis was a co-founder and original lead singer for the band, which enjoyed hit singles including “Y.M.C.A.,” “Go West” and “In the Navy.”

President Donald Trump paid tribute to Willis, calling him “a great and happy guy who loved that I used his groups song, YMCA, at my Rallies.” In a statement on Truth Social, Trump called it an “uplifting song” and said he would “think of Victor every time YMCA is played.”

Willis left the group in 1979 in hopes of embarking on a solo career before reforming the flamboyant disco band in 2017, leading to disputes with some of his former bandmates.

“Y.M.C.A.,” the catchy song that often saw Willis dress-up as a cop, saw a resurgence in popularity after Trump began dancing to the 1978 hit at the end of his campaign rallies in 2020.

Willis said he received thousands of complaints about the use of the song at Trump’s events and had decided to ask the president “to stop using Y.M.C.A. because his use had become a nuisance to me.”

He soon after concluded that Trump “seems to genuinely like Y.M.C.A. and he’s having a lot of fun with it. As such, I simply didn’t have the heart to prevent his continued use of my song,” he said in a lengthy statement in 2024. He added the “financial benefits have been great,” as a result.

Willis performed the song at President Trump’s pre-inauguration rally in January 2025.

Willis also called it a “false assumption” that Y.M.C.A. was written to be a “gay anthem.”

He said he wrote the lyrics to the song based on “the things I knew about the Y in the urban areas of San Francisco such as swimming, basketball, track, and cheap food and cheap rooms.”

He performed as their lead singer and was co-songwriter for all of their most successful singles. In the group, Willis performed costumed as a policeman or a naval officer.

The son of a Baptist preacher, Willis developed his singing skills in his father's church. With training in acting and dance, Willis went to New York and joined the prestigious Negro Ensemble Company. He appeared in many musicals and plays, including the original Broadway production of The Wiz in 1976 and subsequently, the Australian production.

Willis also wrote and recorded several albums in the mid-1970s for independent labels and was eventually introduced to French disco producer Jacques Morali. Morali, who dubbed him the "young man with the big voice", approached Willis and said, "I had a dream that you sang lead vocals on my album and it went very, very big".

Victor Edward Willis was born on July 1, 1951, in Texas and grew up in Haight-Ashbury, in San Francisco. His father was a Baptist minister, and Willis sang gospel music in his church before later moving into jazz and soul. In his teens, he performed with his band the Ballads, opening for The Temptations.

He enrolled at Antioch College before going on to perform in Hair in Las Vegas. After Hair, Willis relocated to New York to work on Broadway.

Willis agreed to sing lead and background vocals under the guise of Village People, an at-that-point non-existent concept group. The album Village People was released in July 1977, including the hits "San Francisco (You've Got Me)" and "In Hollywood (Everybody is a Star)", and became a huge hit in the burgeoning disco market. After an offer from Dick Clark for the group to perform on American Bandstand, Morali and Willis were pressed to develop a "real" group around Willis to perform live. They did so by placing an ad in music trade papers for "macho" singers who "could also dance" and "must have a mustache".

He was soon writing songs produced by and co-written with Morali for the group and other artists, which met with success. The Village People quickly rose to the top of the charts, scoring numerous major hits such as "Macho Man", "Y.M.C.A.", "In the Navy", and "Go West".

In 1980, as preparations for a Village People feature film Can't Stop the Music were underway, Willis left the group. Although he does not appear in the movie, he wrote the lyrics for two of the film's songs, "Magic Night" and "Milkshake". Can't Stop the Music is listed among Hollywood's bigger movie flops. After Willis departed, Village People never had another hit. In an attempt to "recapture the magic", Morali convinced Willis to return to the group in 1982 for the album Fox on the Box. The album was released a year later in the United States as In the Street. Willis left the group again in 1983.

In 2013, Willis appeared on the TV One series Unsung in their two-hour special retrospective on the disco era. On June 28, 2016, he appeared as a contestant on the show To Tell the Truth, and sang "Y.M.C.A." as the credits rolled.

After leaving Village People, Willis declined offers to record and consistently refused to perform any of his Village People hits. In 2010, he appeared at several Major League Baseball stadiums, performing "The Star-Spangled Banner" and leading the crowd for the traditional "Y.M.C.A." seventh-inning stretch.

In 1979, Willis recorded a solo album which remained unreleased for over 35 years. The album, Solo Man, was finally released in August 2015.

In 2017, Willis and Henri Belolo, Morali's business partner and co-owner of the group, reached an out-of-court settlement whereby Willis resumed his role as lead singer of Village People, and they resumed recording and touring internationally. In 2018, Willis announced via social media plans for upcoming Village People projects, including a new studio album, a Christmas music video, and a re-issue of the group's 1979 concert originally released as the "live" portion of the album Live & Sleazy. In November 2022, a third single, "Magic Christmas", was released from the group's Magical Christmas album and entered the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart at number 23, the highest chart entry for any Village People single.

From 1978 to 1982, Willis was married to Phylicia Ayers-Allen (now Phylicia Rashad), whom he met during the run of The Wiz. She later portrayed Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show. Willis wrote the lyrics and arranged the vocals for her disco concept album, Josephine Superstar, which featured the Village People on backing vocals. On November 17, 2007, Willis married Karen Huff, now Huff-Willis, a lawyer and entertainment executive.